Monday, September 27, 2010

Day 6 of the 100 day writing challenge

I am supposed to be creating myself tasks so that I get the job done. A task is something that takes about 15 minutes to do. (That is, writing 2000 words is not a task :-D) (writing 1000 words might be ;-))

I am totally lost here.

So I went to see what others might have thought. Patricia Woodside talks about a lot of things in her blog, among others about the cliche portrait photos writers use :-D
I don't think it's much about the writers thinking their photo should be something like this, I think it's because those are very common positions in portrait art. :-D There's a reason to why a cliche becomes a cliche, and that's because IT WORKS.
I personally like the last category of portraits, the "hand-to-face" photo.  Charlotte Rains Dixon looks like a person I'd love to know, James Baldwin's photo is pure art, and Toni Morrison looks so cute in her portrait :-)
I think I would want a portrait of the author in her work place, but that would not be the office...

I personally love this set of portraits of Joyce Carol Oates - I suppose these are sofa photos ;-)

Here's the photographer Marianne Taylor talking about taking author portraits. (Not so much...). I like the cat photo :-D It looks spontaneous, real, not arranged, a spur of a moment... I think I'd go with that :-D

I have to say that I am one of these “everyone who might be interested in a book about Venice, rude mermaids, baddened magic, hot chocolate and curry. And books, of course. (Isn’t that everyone?)“, so I am interested in Michelle Lovric's books too :-D

Here's some photos about Carla Langhorst. I really like the one in the middle, when she hugs herself and looks a little bit up - the one with hole in the table. That hole is disturbing, but the photo I love. Isn't that "head-and-hand" photo? Sort of? I suppose I should go for the sitting-on-the-table shot, but...

I also like this one, of Philip K. Dick





P.S. Why is race such an issue in USA? I think Carleen Brice is 100% correct. I don't give a damn if the author of the book I read is white, black, red, green, yellow or orange. I don't care if the author is male, female, both or neither. I don't care if the author is 5, 15, 55 or 105. I don't care if the author is still alive or not. I don't care about the color of the characters in the book. I really believe the color is only skin-deep, and under that we are all the same, with flesh, blood and bones, the same feelings, thoughts, ideas and complexes. I might not know EXACTLY what Toni Morrison describes, but I know just as well what Salman Rushdie writes about, or Isabel Allende, or someone like Kelly Link; a white woman born 1969, who writes "slipstream or magic realism: a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism", which is close to what I want to write. I'm not American, and there's a lot of things that are totally normal, common, general, usual things and phenomenons to any American, but not to me.

Angela Booth's 100 days writing challenge

2 comments:

PatriciaW said...

Hey, Ket! Thanks for stopping by and for the "shout out". I haven't quite mastered my 15-min tasks either. But I'm thinking about them, which is a start. A tendency to bite off more than I can chew in that timeframe. Thinking in 15 min intervals is a change for me.

Best wishes with the 100-day challenge. Look forward to seeing where we both come out.

Hart Johnson said...

This author phot stuff is so timely for me! My husband and I got in a huge argument last night because he thinks I am not planning something 'professional enough'--I'm writing cozy mystery, for pete's sake! I should look like someone wants to sit down to have coffee with me! He keeps saying I should 'wear black' and I need a blazer--no amount of arguing convinces him author shots should NOT be corporate executive shots. You've just compiled everything in one place for me to prove him wrong!

On the race in the US thing--I think the PROBLEM is at the industry level. The industry is convinced readers aren't open minded, so until a person of color establishes him or herself, they want to pigeonhole them. It's like 'family drama' by a man is 'insightful mainstream' but by a woman it is 'chick lit'--it's insulting. (but there is admittedly a portion of the American buying public that reinforces this--that is not capable of the enlightened thought that PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE. (they make me hostile)